Tenants in New York City’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments are on track to face the third year in a row of rent increases as renters and landlords grapple with rising costs.
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board on Tuesday endorsed potential rent hikes of 2% to 4.5% for one-year leases and 4% to 6.5% for two-year leases. Price increases in those ranges are likely to be approved at a final vote in June.
The city's rent-stabilized apartment market has come under pressure in recent years. Landlords argue that the rental income from stabilized units has failed to keep up with steep inflation and higher costs as interest rates soared. A 2019 rent law aimed at protecting tenants has also made the situation tougher for property owners.
The challenges have started to raise concerns at banks including New York Community Bancorp. The Long Island-based company and Signature Bank, which failed last year, were major lenders to the market.
The Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents property owners, said the ranges approved on Tuesday would not go far enough to fund improvements for rent-stabilized buildings.
“A guideline near the highest part of the range is necessary in order to cause the least amount of damage,” Executive Director Jay Martin said in a statement.
At the same time, residents face a housing shortage that has pushed rents up in recent years. Citywide, market-rate asking rents climbed 2.1% in February from a year earlier, according to StreetEasy. Rent-stabilized tenant advocates have been pushing for a rent freeze, arguing that it’s not the responsibility of tenants to help owners turn a profit.
The board has approved rent increases in recent years, a shift from when Mayor Bill de Blasio was in office. If approved this year, rent hikes for the roughly 2 million New Yorkers who live in stabilized units would take effect for lease renewals that begin Oct. 1 or later.
The Legal Aid Society, a tenant advocacy group, called on the board to reconsider its plans to raise rents.
“We urge the board to listen to the cries of tenants and take into account how any rent increase will inevitably lead to higher rates of eviction, displacement and homelessness for the more than 2 million New Yorkers who reside in a rent-stabilized dwelling,” the group said in a statement.
Since billionaire Steve Cohen bought the New York Mets in 2020, he has staffed the franchise with veterans of the business world as he seeks to remake the team into a high-spending juggernaut. But for the daunting tasks of running the Mets’ Citi Field ballpark, managing its merchandise and handling business operations for minor-league affiliates, Cohen picked a baseball lifer: Katie Haas, whose work in the sport dates back to her teenage years.
Haas joined the Mets in 2023 as executive vice president of ballpark operations and experience. Two decades earlier, as a high school senior, she got her start working for the Boston Red Sox’s minor league team in her hometown of Sarasota, Florida, where Haas handled “everything from payroll to tarp duty.”
“It was a blast,” Haas recalled from her present-day office past the right-field seats at Citi Field in Willets Point, Queens. “I knew right then and there this was my calling.”
Haas stayed with the Red Sox while she studied at Northeastern University, then led their Florida operations before departing in 2018 to help run the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament in Cincinnati. She was comfortably ensconced as CEO in 2023, when a headhunter called to inquire about joining the Mets.
Haas was well aware of the new life Cohen and his wife, Alexandra, had injected into the Queens team — Haas’s husband is an executive for the Washington Nationals — and she found their pitch persuasive.
“We as a family were watching what Steve and Alex were doing here to really turn baseball on its head,” Haas said.
For Haas, that means an obsessive focus on the fan experience — from the taste of the food to the layout of the team store, whose expansion she oversaw in recent months. The 15-year-old ballpark was built before smartphones became prevalent, but Haas is excited by the idea of using technology to “surprise and delight” fans during games.
“Fans come in and they may have the traditional mindset of, ‘It’s a baseball game. We’re going to get a hot dog and a beer,’” she said. “Well, what if it’s something else completely? What if they come and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, I never thought this could be in a ballpark!’”
On a typical gameday, Haas is at Citi Field from at least 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; a recent day found her planning for Darryl Strawberry’s June 1 number-retirement ceremony while sorting out a broken hot water heater in the clubhouse. Her role spans everything from long-term capital projects to parking, security and food — plus the same responsibilities for non-baseball events such as concerts and private parties, during which Haas tries to be present at the stadium as much as possible.
As for Cohen’s well-publicized push for a casino on the west side of Citi Field, Haas said she is “involved from the operations side,” although Cohen’s separate venture Queens Future is taking the lead on the potential development.
Haas’ recent projects have included remodeling Citi Field’s swanky Delta Club, upgrading parts of the players’ clubhouse and planning for the much-anticipated release of the Mets’ five-borough-themed City Connect jerseys. Underlying them all was the mandate she got from the Cohens: “Be bold, and think big.”
Long accustomed to being the only woman in the room in her previous baseball jobs, Haas is gratified by how much the sport has evolved in recent years, with the Mets’ staff including women in several senior roles. Haas moved her husband and two children to New York from Ohio soon after getting the Mets job and admitted that it can be difficult to find family time given her around-the-clock responsibilities.
But Haas said she’s been amazed by the welcome her family has received as newcomers to the New York sports world. And the awe hasn’t worn off when she glimpses the Midtown skyline during her morning commute across the Whitestone Bridge.
“It’s just, ‘I can’t believe this is my life,’” she said.
ICYMI: St. Peter’s Health Partners announced that it will not close Burdett Birth Center, a Troy health facility that’s been on the brink of closure for months. The recent state budget included a $5 million appropriation to ensure that the birth center – which is the only maternal care service in Rensselaer County – could remain open for the next five years. St. Peter’s plan to close Burdett Birth Center was met with backlash from lawmakers and advocates who said it would shutter access to maternal health care.
MATERNAL HEALTH FUNDING: The federal Health Services and Resources Administration awarded more than $6 million to a group of nonprofits in New York to run its Healthy Start program, which aims to address the health and social needs of moms and babies, the agency announced Tuesday. Six nonprofit organizations will receive $1 million each to address needs such as nutrition, transportation and health access. Awardees include the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Fund for Public Health in New York and Public Health Solutions.
HEALTH SCHOLARSHIP: Gov. Kathy Hochul launched a scholarship program on Tuesday that will provide education funding to New Yorkers training to be registered nurses, respiratory therapists, clinical lab techs, radiology techs and surgical techs. The fund, which is called the New York State Healthcare Workers for Our Future Scholarship, will provide a two-year full-cost-of-attendance scholarship to people in bachelor’s and associate programs at any college accredited in New York state. The state allocated $26 million for scholarships that will be awarded to roughly 500 New Yorkers, the governor’s office said.
Just 12% of hospitals in New York received high grades for how well they prevented infections, injuries and medical errors, a new report shows.
Seventeen hospitals statewide earned an A for patient safety, most of which were located in the New York City region, according to a report released today by the Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that measures quality of care at U.S. hospitals.
New York’s percentage of top-rated hospitals ranked it among states with the worst patient safety grades, with New York ranking 39th in the country. The slot is a slight improvement from the 42nd place it achieved in the fall.
Despite improvements, New York’s meager 12% of hospitals with top patient safety grades is “concerning,” said Alex Campione, a project analyst at Leapfrog who assesses hospitals’ patient safety outcomes. She said that New York’s percentage of highly rated hospitals was lower than the nationwide metric of 30%, indicating that patients statewide had sparse access to high quality and safe medical care.
“When patients don't have access to A hospitals, the chances are that medical errors are more common in the hospitals they're going to,” Campione said.
Most of the New York state hospitals that scored an A for patient safety were owned by major health systems. Seven hospitals under the Northwell Health umbrella received the top grade, including Mather Hospital, Plainview Hospital, South Shore University Hospital, Peconic Bay Medical Center, Northern Westchester Hospital, Glen Cove Hospital and Huntington Hospital.
NYU Lagone’s three hospitals, including its main campus in Midtown and locations in Brooklyn and Long Island, all received top patient safety grades. Catholic Health’s Kenmore Mercy Hospital, St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center and St. Charles Hospital received As. And so did White Plains Hospital, which is a part of Montefiore Health System.
Leapfrog evaluated 143 hospitals in New York on nearly two dozen patient safety metrics, including data that’s collected by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The organization measures preventive and procedural metrics, such as hand hygiene and staffing levels, as well as health outcomes including falls, hospital-acquired infections and air embolisms.
The grades are designed to help patients find safe and high-quality care. Roughly 200,000 people each year die from hospital-acquired infections, medical errors and injuries – deaths that could have been prevented.
Less than a third of hospitals in the New York City region, which includes New Jersey and Connecticut, earned an A in the latest Leapfrog ranking, indicating better access to high quality care in the city compared to other parts of the state, Campione said. But New York City still ranked 48th of 93 other metropolitan areas nationwide.
New York state had three hospitals that received an F: Arnot Ogden Medical Center, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Erie County Medical Center. Nearly one in five hospitals statewide received a D, including New York City’s Montefiore Moses and Einstein campuses, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, Nassau University Medical Center, St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, St. Barnabas Hospital and New York City Health + Hospitals/Woodhull.
More than half of hospitals received a C, according to Leapfrog’s data.
Campione said that some patient safety metrics have started to improve nationwide in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic. Hospital-acquired infections including MRSA, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and central line-associated blood infections have all decreased at hospitals, she noted.
But patient satisfaction still remains below pre-pandemic levels, Campione said, adding that she’d like to see that metric improve.
“Just because a hospital is a C or a D, doesn’t mean they can’t become an A,” Campione said, adding that she hopes hospital leaders see the patient safety rankings as a motivating factor.
The Leapfrog Group, founded in 2000, publishes bi-annual reports analyzing hospitals’ patient safety grades.
May 1, 2024: A previous version of this article misstated that White Plains Hospital, which is a part of Montefiore Health System, was a part of Northwell Health. The article has been corrected.
Northwell Health posted a 1.42% operating margin for the fourth quarter of 2023, bringing the health system back in the black, according to financial results released Monday.
The performance represents an improvement over the fourth quarter of 2022, when the system recorded a negative margin. Total revenues ballooned to $4.4 billion, a jump of nearly 7%. Patient services revenue grew by 7% to about $4 billion while other revenue grew by almost 17% to $419 million.
In notes on the system’s full 2023 performance, Northwell management attributed the increases to higher pharmacy sales and payment rates and growth in Northwell’s ambulatory care and physician network. In the last quarter of 2023, the system opened a $16 million center for advanced neurological procedures in Sleepy Hollow and a $52 million multispecialty facility in Rego Park, two of its most recent examples of expansion.
Volume for many services is at or above prepandemic levels, the management discussion also noted, contributing to higher revenues.
Barbara Osborn, a spokeswoman for the health system, declined to comment on Northwell’s fourth-quarter performance. However, she said that Northwell received a Medicare rate settlement for the 340B federal drug program and an influx of funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Covid-19 relief in 2023, helping to increase revenue for the year overall.
As revenues grew for the quarter, so did costs. The system’s total expenses reached $4.3 billion for the quarter, a nearly 5% boost. Wage expenses grew by 3% to just over $2 billion while supply expenses rose to $1.3 billion, a 4% increase. Benefits expenses grew the most to nearly $489 million, a 13% jump.
Management attributed the growth to cost of living wage increases the system implemented to keep pace with the changing economic environment, facility investments to grow capacity and physician and ambulatory network expansion. The system also invested in information technology and patient safety initiatives that contributed to rising salary and benefit expenses, according to the notes, and worked to lower its supply chain spending to control supply costs. Osborn added that going forward Northwell will focus on tightening operations and growing certain areas of business in an effort to bring results back to prepandemic levels.
Northwell Health operates 21 hospitals and 900 ambulatory facilities and physician practices across Long Island, the city and Westchester.
NYPD officers were deployed to Columbia University late Tuesday evening and entered a building where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have barricaded themselves.
CNN’s live broadcast showed NYPD officers entering Hamilton Hall, the focal point of the protest, which had been occupied by protesters early Tuesday. Dozens of people have been arrested and loaded into buses, CNN reported.
In a statement late Tuesday, Columbia said the NYPD was brought in shortly after 9 p.m. to restore order and ensure the safety of the campus community.
“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” a university spokesman said. “Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
Further uptown, police made arrests outside City College of New York, dispersing protesters and erecting steel barricades in the area. Despite the police action, the protest encampment at Columbia remains intact, the New York Times reported.
Shortly before the clashes, Mayor Eric Adams, addressing the media alongside Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intel and counterterrorism, and other police officials condemned the protesters’ actions and said the police were on standby and prepared to step in if requested by university leadership.
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose,” said Adams. “We cannot wait till this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now.”
Adams raised alarm over the influence of “professional outside agitators” on the student-led demonstrations and warned students to leave.
Columbia officials responded swiftly on Tuesday, threatening expulsion for any student who refused to leave the occupied building. The campus has been placed under a partial lockdown, allowing access to only essential staff and some students.
“If you are a parent or guardian of a student, please call your child and urge them to leave the area before the situation escalates in any way,” Adams told reporters.
Breaking up can be pricey in the world of luxury real estate.
Jason Brown, a former partner at RFR Holding, the firm behind the Chrysler Building, the Seagram Building and other high-profile sites, nabbed a hefty $25 million exit package upon leaving the company in 2019, according to a new court filing about an ongoing case in the matter.
In general, details about executive pay are usually negotiated secretly and kept under wraps at privately-held firms such as RFR, whose co-principals and co-founders are Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs.
But the payout for Brown, who served as the chief operating officer, spilled out into the open after Rosen and Fuchs stopped making installments on Brown’s payment in winter 2021. After the missed payment, which was supposed to be Brown’s third, Brown dragged his ex-bosses into court.
The battle, which does not appear to have been previously reported, appears to have been settled in spring 2021 with Rosen and Fuchs agreeing to pay a penalty of 12% interest on the missed amount and to resume wiring money, court records show. The developers also had to admit wrongdoing.
“I admit that I defaulted on my obligations under the promissory note,” Rosen wrote in court papers. “I admit that I have not asserted and do not have any defense to justify, excuse or otherwise defend against my default.”
Because confessions like the developers’ are enforceable only for three years, a judge also ordered Rosen and Fuchs to admit wrongdoing again at a later date, which led to a similar confession that appeared Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Since tangling with Brown, RFR’s principals appear to have stayed current. Brown apparently has received a $3.5 million payment every winter since 2021, records show, and can supposedly expect to continue reaping identical windfalls until 2026.
It’s not known why RFR parted ways with Brown, who was in his late 40s when he left the company after more than a decade in a C-suite position. The same year Brown left RFR, he listed his nine-bedroom Greenwich mansion for $16.4 million and sold it for $12.5 million the following year, according to Zillow. RFR’s current COO is Michael Astarita, according to the company’s website.
As have many office landlords in the post-Covid period, RFR appears to have struggled with persistent office vacancies. A $105 million mortgage backed by a half-empty RFR office building at 90 Fifth Ave. near Union Square was sent to special servicing in March after its property taxes went unpaid.
Similarly, in 2022 RFR lost control of the Gramercy Park Hotel, the downtown rock-and-roll icon, after a yearslong dispute with land owner Solil Management, a real estate arm of the Goldman family, over millions of dollars in Covid-related missed rent payments.
However in a blockbuster 11th-hour deal, RFR did recently manage to refinance the maturing debt on its signature property, the landmark Seagram Building at 375 Park Ave., after securing a $1.1 billion loan package from lender JVP Management.
The 33-year-old RFR also owns the Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Ave., though not its land, which is controlled by the college Cooper Union.
A phone message left for RFR’s spokesman was not returned, and Brown could not be reached by press time.
The city is scrambling to beef up its team of staffers who will enforce New York’s building climate law, Local Law 97, ahead of a fast-approaching 2025 deadline for property owners to submit reports proving that they are in compliance with the contentious law.
Newly proposed investments in Mayor Eric Adams proposed executive budget for the 2025 fiscal year allocate $4 million and 36 new full-time staffers to enforce the city’s landmark decarbonization law that began to take effect for some 50,000 buildings at the start of the year.
The new full-time positions would more than double the current team of 22 people working in the Department of Buildings preparing to enforce Local Law 97. With the additional staff, the city would have a total of 58 people dedicated to the implementation and enforcement of the law. That would be a dramatic uptick from the sparse team of 11 the Department of Buildings said it had focused on the issue in February, and would help ensure the measure has teeth in enforcing reluctant building owners to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The investment is in advance of a May 2025 requirement for building owners affected by the law to submit reports to the building’s department detailing their annual greenhouse gas emission. If a building exceeds its carbon cap, owners will face fees of $268 for every ton of carbon dioxide over the limit. That could translate to fines of tens of thousands of dollars each year.
Buildings officials will be tasked with the work of collecting and analyzing thousands of reports, along with doling out and enforcing penalties to building owners who fail to meet their new annual emissions targets.
The new resources are a result of the city’s new climate budgeting process unveiled Tuesday to advance city sustainability and resilience efforts.
Recruitment for the positions has been particularly tricky for the buildings department because they require occupational licenses and the city faces robust competition from the private sector, according to city officials.
Climate advocates and City Council members have, in recent months, pushed in closed-door meetings for more staff and resources dedicated to Local Law 97.
“I think we're generally seeing that the administration is recognizing the call to meet the greater need in this specific department,” said Shravanthi Kanekal, senior resiliency planner for the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. “This is definitely a step in the right direction.”
Donna De Costanzo, the northeast regional lead for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said she was “heartened” to see that the Adams administration is giving the enforcement of Local Law 97 greater attention.
“It's critical that New York City continue to allocate the capacity and resources needed to implement the law and ensure there's an adequate and sustained budget to make it a success,” De Costanzo said.
Hours after student protesters at Columbia University took over a campus building, Mayor Eric Adams warned against further escalation on Tuesday and claimed that “professional outside agitators” had “co-opted” a peaceful demonstration.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators began occupying Hamilton Hall on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus overnight, without any reported resistance from law enforcement. The city has maintained a large police presence outside the campus gates, responding to what Adams said was a request by Columbia’s administrators.
“They asked us to come into all their entry points to monitor that,” Adams said during an unrelated press conference on Tuesday, adding that people unaffiliated with the university had tried to join the campus protests. “The entry to the school is on the streets and it’s important to protect the streets.”
Adams and NYPD officials have said for days that officers would not move onto Columbia’s campus unless their presence was requested by administrators, as happened last week when officers arrested more than 100 people who had camped out on the school’s south lawn. But the mayor also added Tuesday that the occupation of a building marked an “elevation” of tensions.
“We cannot allow the elevation of actions like that,” Adams said.
Hours later, Tuesday evening, Adams called another press conference at NYPD headquarters, where he and top police officials repeated a claim that outsiders unaffiliated with Columbia had infiltrated the protest and sown discord. Officials refused to identify any of those people, but Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said that some had been known to frequent prior protests such as Occupy Wall Street and the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta.
“A lot of people involved, some are known to us, and others are reported by university officials to be unaffiliated with campus” Weiner said, adding that the destruction of security cameras on campus had hampered attempts to identify people. Weiner showed reporters footage and photos of people clad in black smashing windows and barricading doors at Hamilton Hall, but did not specify which of the people shown were alleged to be outsiders.
Students who are occupying Hamilton Hall would face charges of third-degree burglary, criminal mischief and trespassing if police are invited onto campus, said Kaz Daughtry, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for operations. People who remain camped out outside would be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Columbia is threatening to expel students who are occupying the building, and is suspending students who did not leave an outdoor encampment before a deadline it set Monday. Student protesters have said they will remain inside the building until the university meets their demands, which include disclosing the university’s financial investments and divesting from companies with ties to Israel.
“We made it very clear yesterday that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules,” the office of Columbia’s president Minouche Shafik wrote in a Tuesday afternoon email to the university community. “Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences. Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation — vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances —and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday.”
Adams offered a measure of sympathy for the students earlier Tuesday, defending their right to free speech and saying Tuesday that he had protested for causes such as divestment from Apartheid South Africa during his days as a college student. But the mayor has also condemned those associated with the Columbia protest who have been seen making antisemitic remarks. (Student organizers have called their protest peaceful, and at least some of the hateful rhetoric has been attributed to members of the public unaffiliated with the student group.)
A large number of police officers continued to surround the Columbia campus on Tuesday, concentrated mostly along the East Side of Broadway where the university’s main campus lies.
Also on Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that students occupying the academic building “are clearly breaking the law” and called for accountability — whether through “disciplinary action from the school or from law enforcement.”
The mayor, asked earlier whether the National Guard should be sent in — a fraught possibility given the deadly results at Kent State University half a century ago — said immediately that such an escalation would not be necessary.
“The NYPD is doing an amazing job,” Adams said.